Ted Cruz and the Tea Party's March to World Domination

TAMPA, Fla. — It's so hot here that at night when the delegates pour out of the Tampa Bay Times Forum they are spritzed with cool water like a giant produce section, which makes you clammy in addition to hot, because it's already so damp in Tampa that it's even soggy inside the convention hall, where it's a steady 60 degrees. Which is why it's good that the Texas delegation is so well-covered, looking as they do like L.L. Bean hijacked a truckload of Texas flags. And there they were on Tuesday night, in a rapturous two-steppin' frenzy as their latest lone star, Tea Party supernova Ted Cruz, ascended the stage to address his biggest audience yet.

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Conventions anymore are events as logistically complex as the Normandy invasion, with thousands scrambling around as if their next act will determine the fate of the world, and a security apparatus that would make the Israelis envious. But in places like these no fates are decided but a few, because what these largely truthless events can still do is crown stars, who will go forth out into the world and slay dragons after all the party functionaries take off their silly hats and hang up their Texas flag shirts and go back home. It's an uglier version of America's Got Talent. Barack Obama exists today because of a speech he gave at one of these stilted rituals in 2004. Bill Clinton embarrassed himself in 1988 by filibustering when he was given only five minutes to nominate Michael Dukakis (all over the convention floor, Dukakis staffers were standing on chairs, screaming at the dais, drawing their fingers across their necks, but it was no use), but became a star a couple nights later by taking his mea culpa to the Tonight Show. Last night, Condi Rice showed why she should have given the keynote here in Tampa instead of the big guy.

And there was Ted Cruz of Texas looking fine and practiced in his boots and suit up on stage in the clammy hockey arena where the Republicans are meeting. No Louie Gohmert simpleton, the Princeton and Harvard Law-educated Cruz is very impressive and clearly a star. Supremely self-confident, he used no podium, instead strolling back and forth across the lip of the stage like Anthony Robbins awakening the giant within. If the Republicans take back the Senate in November, and they only need three or four seats to do it (depending on who wins the White House), Cruz will take his place — and immediately assume an outsized role — in what will be the seriously large Tea Party contingent of the most exclusive club in the world, which will by January — if all goes as planned — number about ten (Florida's Marco Rubio, Utah's Mike Lee, Kentucky's Rand Paul, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, Kansas's Jerry Moran, Indiana's Richard Mourdock, Nebraska's Deb Fischer, Cruz, and the Senate Tea Party granddaddy, Jim DeMint of South Carolina).

In his speech, Cruz outlined the meteoric success the Tea Party movement has enjoyed pillaging the complacent establishment of the Republican party, reeling off a roster of the scalps they've taken and territory they've seized. (Somehow he forgot to mention Scott Brown, the Tea Party's first crush.) But no upset has been more dramatic than Cruz's own decimation of Rick Perry's own Lieutenant Governor, David Dewhurst, in the Texas Republican primary runoff one month ago. It is a simple fact that Ted Cruz shouldn't have even been here in Tampa, except for maybe as a delegate.

In a extraordinary irony, Cruz can thank the vanquished Dewhurst for his sweet primetime speaking slot. Here's why: As lieutenant governor, Dewhurst runs the Texas Senate, and in that capacity passed a redistricting plan based on the recent census that was so blatantly discriminatory (recently, my home state has a perfect record of violating the Voting Rights Act) that the Justice Department sued to strike it down, which delayed the primary this year from Super Tuesday in March until the end of May, with a runoff at the end July. This delay of almost three months allowed Cruz to catch fire and go "from zero to win," as veteran Texas political observer Harold Cook told me. And so the blood on Dewhurst's hands is his own. If his own redistricting plan hadn't so blatantly violated the law, and the Senate primary had commenced in March as it should have, Dewhurst would be house-hunting in Georgetown right now and Ted Cruz would be here in Tampa, wearing one of those fantastic flag shirts along with the rest of the delegates on the floor.